A diplomatic take on contemporary Chinese art

‘I never set out to build an art collection,’ says former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby. ‘It sort of took hold of me.’

Geoff Raby with Chen Man’s photograph of a young woman pedalling past the Forbidden City with a designer handbag, and one of Chen Wenling’s sculptures perched on his shoulder. Picture: Li Xiaonan

“I never set out to build an art collection,” says former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby. “It sort of took hold of me.”

Mr Raby, whose interest in China spans more than 30 years, has built up a collection of contemporary Chinese art that he houses in a studio on the outskirts of Beijing.

The collection of more than 200 paintings and sculptures has been documented in a catalogue, The Geoff Raby Collection of Contemporary Chinese Art, to be launched tomorrow.

The complete set of Chen Wenling’s Red Memory series of sculptures.

“My latest acquisition is from Tibet,” Mr Raby said, pointing at a blue, black and white painting of a goddess sitting cross-legged and holding a gun to her head.

“It’s a blue Tara, the goddess of hope, and she is blowing her brains out.”

Mr Raby first arrived in China in the mid-1980s as the People’s Republic was beginning to open to the West. He and other diplomats started to mix with local artists and discovered that their work was responding to the rapid changes happening in China.

When he returned to China in 2007 as ambassador, Mr Raby continued his art buying with a larger chequebook.

His collection includes red elongated sculptural figures by Chen Wenling and a dramatic photo by Chen Man of a young woman on a bicycle pedalling past the Forbidden City with a ­designer handbag.

It includes works by Chinese-Australian artist Guo Jian, a protester in the Tiananmen Square tragedy of June 1989, whose artworks inspired by the massacre led to his expulsion from China.

Hua Jiming’s 2008 lithograph 20 Maos.

The catalogue was inspired by an American art expert who declared the collection reflected Mr Raby’s character.

“I had never thought a collection would have a personality,” he said. “That’s when I started thinking I needed someone to bring it together and discover what the personality of the collection is.”

Mr Raby was unable to put a value on his collection and “would hate to think” what he had spent on it. His goal eventually is to donate his collection to an institution in Australia that could display it in a way that showed the changing nature of China through his eyes.